Aimed at "empowering" teachers and students in a culturally diverse society, this book suggests that schools must respect student's language and culture, encourage community participation, promote critical literacy, and institute forms of assessment in order to reverse patterns of under-achievement in pupils from varying cultures. The book shows that students who have been failed by schools predominantly come from communities whose languages, cultures and identities have been distorted and devalued in the wider society, and schools have reinforced this pattern of disempowerment.